TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 4/24/97: American Pastoral By Philip Roth Fiction 4/24/97: The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy Fiction 4/23/97: American Nomad By Steve Erickson Nonfiction 4/22/97: Into Thin Air A Personal Account Of The Mount Everest Disaster By Jon Krakauer Nonfiction 4/21/97: Down by the River By Edna O'Brien Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: Cookbook Shelf "Intercourses: An Aphrodiasic Cookbook" (04/23/97) Reviewed by Jonathan Hayes RECENT BOOK FEATURES

EASTERN STANDARD TIME A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture from Astro Boy to Zen Buddhism By Jeff Yang, Dina Gan, Terry Hong and the staff of A. Magazine Houghton Mifflin, 352 pages, Nonfiction BY GARY KRIST my infatuation with all things Asian began when, over the course of a single year of elementary school, I discovered "Speed Racer," karate and the Lobster Cantonese special at Hing's in Englewood, N.J. My tastes have changed over the years, but the Asian influence in my life shows no signs of abating. Nowadays, I drive a Toyota, sleep on a futon, decorate my walls with Chinese brush paintings and eat malai kofta and dim sum more often than hamburgers. My idea of an ideal night at home? Munching a bowlful of sembei rice crackers while watching an old Kurosawa film. Clearly, I'm not alone in my Asiophilia. As Jeff Yang and the staff of A. Magazine point out in "Eastern Standard Time," their entertaining and sometimes irreverent guide to Asian culture, America's consumption of Eastern imports is remarkably widespread -- perhaps even more widespread than we realize. Many things we consider home-grown are actually Asian in origin, from the Chutes and Ladders we play as children (an old Hindu religious game designed to teach the consequences of good and evil behavior) to the cultured pearls we wear as aging matrons (90 percent of the world's freshwater pearls come from China, where the cultivation process was discovered in the ninth century). Even the bandannas worn by cowboys in the Old West -- how American can you get? -- originated in the other hemisphere (the word derives from the Sanskrit for "to tie"). Cleverly written and wittily designed, "Eastern Standard Time" is a book to be sampled rather than read cover to cover. It's full of all manner of Asia-related information, some of it useful (e.g., the explanations of Asian menus and traditional medicines), some merely interesting (the rules of sumo wrestling) and some downright silly (a precis on how the White House might be renovated to improve the building's feng shui). There's even a section about "Connie Chung Syndrome," subtitled -- with characteristic attitude -- "Asian Female Broadcasters Everywhere!" I do have a few minor complaints. Given the relative shortage of entries about Islamic and Hindu Asia, the book can be accused of having an East Asian bias. And its priorities can often seem a little ... well, frivolous (we're given 13 pages on Hong Kong cinema, for instance, and only one on the traditional calligraphy of China, Korea and Japan). But the authors do occasionally get serious enough to discuss topics like the growing number of Asian adoptees in the U.S. and the persistence of Asian stereotypes in Western movies. On balance, "Eastern Standard Time" is a success -- just the kind of guide that every aspiring Zeitgeist-watcher needs in the late 1990s. Read it, and you may even understand what that whole "Hello Kitty" phenomenon is all about. April 28, 1997 Gary Krist, who reviews books for the New York Times and the Washington Post, is the author of the upcoming novel "Bad Chemistry." BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html